Further Out Than You Thought Page 9

  She made a left onto Fairfax and flew down it, past the antique stores and the Jewish delis, past the dry cleaners and the kosher bakeries with wedding cakes in the windows. They flew down the street that was always, at this hour on a weekday, stop and go, but today was deserted. The people had gone home hours ago and were now glued to their televisions, eager to see just how bad things were going to get.

  Leo took a joint from his box of cassette tapes and lit it. Right there in broad daylight. “Holy fuck,” he said. He rolled the window down and exhaled, adding a little cannabis smoke to the smoke from the burning buildings. “Have you ever felt so free? It’s alive. The city is finally alive. The structure is crumbling, Gwen. Every artifice, every wall. Made to keep us all in line, to keep us marching. We could do anything right now. Anything you want.”

  He took the steering wheel in his hand and spun it to the left. Her car veered across the double yellow lines and into the left lane where oncoming traffic would have been if there were any. “See?” Leo said, looking at her and not the road. “You’ve got to break the chains. If not now, if not right now—”

  “Leo! Fuck! We’re not in England.” Gwen took back the wheel and swerved into the right lane, just missing a car—a pimped-out Cadillac—as it made a right turn toward her.

  “Open your mind, babe.” He offered her the joint. She kept her hands on the wheel, her eyes on the road.

  “What are you,” he said, “going Amish on me?”

  “Amish?”

  “Mormon, then.” He put out the joint in her ashtray. “Come on! Wake up. This is as wide open as it’s ever going to get,” he said, and he leaned out the window into the wind and started singing.

  She had felt free, had felt the vast wilderness pulsing inside her, until he got in the car and she became the responsible one. Didn’t it always happen like this? She’d be at the wheel, making sure they didn’t crash, making sure they got where they needed to, while Leo was out the window singing. Were she to call him on it, she knew what his reply would be. I’m a musician, he’d say. As if musicians lived entirely in the ether. As if the title explained everything. And maybe it did. Maybe that’s where she’d gone wrong in choosing him. She’d wanted a man who could feel things, who could open himself to her and be vulnerable and present, who’d drop everything and take off with her on grand, impromptu adventures. She’d wanted a playmate—Peter Pan—and that was just what she’d gotten. But two children couldn’t survive on their own. One of them had to be the adult.

  Chanting, his mouth was wide:

  Kali, Kali—

  Terrible beauty.

  Kali, Kali—

  We bow, bow down to Thee.

  Kali, Kali.

  Lilting, lifting, his voice was pure, so fucking pure, it made the smoke lyrical, almost holy.

  He pulled a small bamboo pan flute from his shoe box and played and sang and played. Here was another fire. She took her foot off the gas and coasted by it, feeling the heat and watching the flames dance.

  He was right to call on Kali. To recognize the riots as her work. Hindu goddess of fertility and birth and destruction, her womb a void, an abyss, Kali was the fierce, fiery mother of all. Black-skinned, red-eyed goddess of the night, she wore only a necklace of skulls and a girdle of men’s hands. She danced, holding in one hand a sword, in the other a man’s severed head. Try me, she’d say, staring you down, drowning you in her deep laugh. Her breasts, so full of milk, of what could give life, were bloody from her kill. She was the great paradox, the destroyer of illusions. Her tongue extended like a flytrap, she tasted the world’s flavors free from discretion. Her blackness, since it was all colors combined, embodied the universe, the totality, and since it was the absence of color, it was also the ultimate reality—that which transcends appearances.

  Gwen could feel Kali entering her heart. She was a fire consuming all Gwen had ever thought she needed and loved and was. Daughter, lover, student, stripper, poet—all of it, every possible label, was fuel for the flames.

  What remained would be scorched and smell of smoke. What remained would burn her eyes. Her open eyes.

  Yes. She would keep them open. She would see it through, this cremation of her selves, this work of Kali. She would see what she was left with when morning came; she would see who she really was.

  Leo was singing a new wordless tune, one she hadn’t heard before. And in a clear patch of air she could make out the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. As they passed its hushed expanse, she wondered if anyone had thought to loot the paintings. There was one she coveted. It was on the third floor, in the American Collection. Granville Redmond, from 1926. California Poppy Field. It was so big that if you stood close you could see the dots it was made of, you could lose yourself in pure color, but standing back a little you felt like you were in the field of orange poppies, like you could sit under an oak tree if you wanted to, lie back and watch the clouds move across the far peaks. If she could hang this painting on her wall, look at it when she first woke up and before she went to bed, she was sure all that peace and the sense of quiet distance would change her in ways she couldn’t imagine.

  She flipped on her blinker to turn right onto Sixth Street, their street. Why on earth was she using her blinker? The habit of courtesy and lawfulness was entrenched. Maybe Leo was right and she should loosen up a little.

  Before she could turn, Leo pointed. “Shit,” he said. “Look!” She stopped the car. On the next block, in front of the 99 Cents Only Store, there was shouting, and then gunfire—loud blasts that made Gwen duck behind the steering wheel. People were running, and there was screaming.

  “I’ll kill you, motherfucker!” someone yelled. More shots thundered and an old Chevy peeled off down the road.

  Gwen put her foot on the gas. “Wait,” Leo said, craning his neck to keep watching. But she meant to get them home. They’d pass the tar pits and have just a couple blocks to go.

  She clamped her teeth, pressed her lips against the shrill, nameless fury that without any warning seemed to be rising inside her. She could scream at him for days, one interminable roar, but what good would come of it? In the confining silence she drank her water. It only made her want more.

  She drove fast down Third, straight through a red light, and took a side street to Sixth. Making a right onto South Cochran, she was home. The Cornell was still standing.

  “Tink,” Leo said, “get out. You’ll be safe here. I’ll park the car.”

  She pulled up to the curb. They could see, on top of the Cornell, a few of the residents watching the city burn.

  “I’ll meet you up there,” said Leo, and she was too tired to disagree with him. He took her place behind the wheel. His eyes were the orange of the sky; they were ignited, and she wondered if he would return or if he’d drive off into the heat, into the blazing heart of the city, if he’d join those incendiaries—because fire meant liberation from form, because flames were rapturous, because change was at last upon them.

  Twelve

  SHE TOOK A long breath and turned toward their brick building—brick, like the house in “The Three Little Pigs,” the house that survived the wolf and his tricks, the one that kept the pigs safe. The Cornell had never felt so much like home. She hurried through the courtyard—past the fountain and the flowers and the hazy stone faces—through the lobby and up the four flights of stairs. She climbed the little hatch and walked out onto the roof, abuzz with tenants—Greg the manager and Psycho Barry among the dozens of strangers with whom she lived and had seen, if at all, only in passing.

  On all sides of the Cornell the city spread as far as she could see, and it was burning. She counted eleven fires. On all sides helicopters circled and hovered. Below them, the fire trucks and the police cars screamed, their red flashing lights projecting panic onto the low-hung layer of smoke as their sirens called and called down the empty streets.

  Alone on the roof’s western edge stood the Count in his full rocker getup. He looked the way he had
when she’d met him, with the long black wig, the white T-shirt and the vest with the fur and the suede fringe, with the tight black pants, the belt with silver studs and the silver bracelets jangling on his arms. With a grand gesture imbued with the confidence of an explorer, he squared his shoulders and pointed to the west, where the Pacific lay beyond their view, and she saw something new go up in flames. Everyone on the roof saw it, too, and they oohed and aahed, as if they were watching a fireworks show. The flames leaped higher and the smoke blackened and rose.

  When Valiant saw her he smiled—an actual toothy grin. It had been years since she’d seen him smile like that. He was boyish, spry, his dark skin glowing. Hell, he almost looked healthy. Like a big brother, or maybe a big sister with the long hair and the bracelets, he took her in his spindly arms and squeezed her tight, picking her up so that her feet came off the roof. She gave him a kiss on the cheek. It was smooth and smelled of Polo aftershave. He’d cleaned himself up for the occasion. She noticed that he’d covered up the lesion on his neck with makeup. He set her down and looked at her as if she’d just come back from a long sea voyage or a trip to outer space.

  “The lovely Gwendolyn has returned. Thought you’d never make it.”

  “Oh, Count,” she said, happier than she’d been in a long, long time. “It’s good to see you, too.”

  Her friend was back. It had taken a city on fire to resurrect him, but he was here, standing beside her. His eyes were still sunken, but they had a glow to them, like Leo’s. It was the reflection of the sky—the sun through the filter of smoke casting the scene in its eerie, crepuscular, end-of-the-world orange. And it was the light inside him rising, surfacing, the light this disaster had awakened. There was a quickening, a vibrancy Gwen hadn’t seen in him since his nights at Café Largo, sitting at the piano, cracking jokes and crooning to the crowds.

  To the east now, another building, freshly torched, was adding to the smoke-thick air its dark song.

  “La Brea,” said Leo, stepping onto the roof. “They’re looting the shops.”

  “You drove down it?” Gwen said.

  “Just to see.”

  “How’s Jin’s?”

  “Still there. He’s outside it with his brothers. They have guns. No one’s going to mess with them. But La Brea’s a fucking madhouse.”

  “Which stores?” said a boy walking toward them, one of those tenants Gwen hadn’t noticed before. There were so many of them living one, two floors up, living their own lives. This was the first time they’d all been in one place—this was the big get-to-know-you roof party.

  On the roof of the new building across the street—the building that brought the neighborhood squarely into the nineties with its mauve stucco, its balconies’ metal railings painted aqua, and with its name, the Palms—the residents were barbecuing. She could smell the seared meat. It made her stomach growl.

  The boy stood between her and Leo. He had cropped blond hair and black eyeliner. He was shirtless and tan and he stood, in his low jeans, drinking his Miller. “They’re not looting the Music Store, are they?” he said, flashing his white teeth.

  “Are you a musician?” said Leo.

  “A guitarist. They have some very pretty guitars.”

  Greg sauntered over, the gray roots of his brown hair shining despite the smoke. “You know,” he said, placing a soft hand on the blond boy’s shoulder, “you’re not allowed to have alcohol up here.”

  “Isn’t this just dreadful,” said the Count. He joined the group and looked down at them all. “Leo, you wouldn’t mind leaving your beautiful new friend, would you?” He took his camera from around his neck and gave it to Leo.

  “I was just leaving,” the boy said, handing his Miller to the Count and grinning. “There’s a Les Paul calling my name.”

  They all watched him go.

  “Jesus,” said the Count. “That gorgeous ass. Where has he been hiding?”

  Gwen smiled. It was good to see him back in action. “You ought to get out more.”

  “Yes, my dear, you have a point.”

  “I’ll take that,” Greg said, and he reached for the beer.

  “It’d be a shame to waste it,” said Valiant, downing it. Greg glared at him. “What? Isn’t beer mostly water anyhow?” Valiant handed him the empty bottle. With a flip of his hair, Greg headed for the trash can.

  “Poor guy,” said Leo.

  “He needs a drink,” said the Count.

  “Or a boyfriend,” said Gwen.

  The Count walked to the roof’s southwest corner. He straightened his wig, tucked in his T-shirt, and stood tall, shoulders back, chest out. He stood with his hands on his hips, his arms akimbo, looking out at the city so his face was in sharp profile to the camera. Behind him three fires burned, each with its own bleeding heart.

  This was one of those war-torn cities in another country, one you had to cross the Atlantic to get to. This was Beirut or Prague or Berlin. This wasn’t L.A. At least it wasn’t the Los Angeles Gwen believed existed when she was a kid, when she’d visited with her mother and stayed at the Hotel Bel-Air or the Chateau Marmont, when they buzzed around Beverly Hills in her mother’s convertible Porsche visiting her old friends—actors and producers—and L.A. was green and flowering, bougainvillea and honeysuckle and hibiscus spilling over the stone walls and into the windy streets, when L.A. was the Malibu coastline, when it was Gladstones for lunch and Chasen’s for dinner, when it was so many stars in Gwen’s eyes, as if she were dizzy from spinning too long. Her mother had seemed most alive here, most herself. She’d been quick to smile, and so carefree, so beautiful Gwen almost hadn’t recognized her.

  Leo snapped the Count’s photo and handed the camera to her.

  “You mind?”

  He stood where Valiant had and Gwen pointed the lens at him, got ready to shoot. She knew why her mother had liked being a photographer. There was power in looking through a lens. With a camera over your face, you become a witness. You take yourself out of the scene, and make of its disparate elements a coherence, a meaning.

  Valiant’s camera was the same kind her mother had used, an old Nikon, and he shot only black-and-white. You had to take your time with the f-stop and the shutter speed. You had to get it right before you clicked. She placed Leo at the edge of the frame, the three fires to his left. She brought the top gold button on his jacket into focus.

  “Ready?” Her hair was blowing in the warm wind and she had to hold it back with her hand so it wouldn’t block the lens.

  Leo’s bloodshot eyes were dead serious. He’d felt the city seethe beneath its skin, and now that it was breaking open, breaking out, he was proud, as if it were somehow his creation. His hair in that low ponytail, his black tricornered hat firmly on his head, he faced her. He held her eyes with his. He was all intention—this boy, this man. The father of her child.

  She pushed the thought from her head. She’d not decided. There hadn’t been time. She needed to walk somewhere alone. She needed to write, to think.

  A few sun-streaked wisps of Leo’s hair blew across his face and she clicked the shutter.

  There.

  “It’s good?” he said.

  “I think so.”

  “It’ll be the cover of my CD, when it gets made. And Gwen,” he said, “it’ll get made. You’ll see. This time next year I’ll have a big fat contract.”

  She watched him walk to the center of the roof and sit down. This was nothing new. She was used to his mood swings around money. One minute he wouldn’t have a thing to do with it, and the next he was going to make a million.

  He closed his eyes and sang a cappella one of what he called his Songs of Independence, the one with the fallen angel. Surprised, a few tenants snickered. Or had she just thought they snickered? She never had been comfortable with Leo’s pot-enhanced eruptions into song, at least not when they were in public. She joined Valiant at the roof’s edge and gave him back his camera. He slung it around his neck, aimed it at Leo. Took a picture. “This
is history,” he said. “And we’re here, kid. We’re part of it.”

  People were gathering around Leo now. They were sitting down to listen. The group was largely female, but there was Psycho Barry, sitting closest, hugging his knees and humming along with him.

  The ash fell in big white flakes. Los Angeles snow. They leaned on the railing, Gwen and Valiant, as if they were on the prow of a ship looking out at the horizon, that line they could never reach. They watched the fires, listened to Leo’s voice.

  Angel, angel, fallen, fallen,

  angel, my angel girl, fallen girl.

  Ashes of what once were wings,

  dimes in her cup she sings.

  Angel, angel, fallen.

  Gwen caught a flake of ash in her hand.

  “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Valiant said.

  “The city?”

  “Spread out below us. Burning.”

  “It’s pure. Or true or something.”

  “It almost makes it okay.”

  “The wreckage?”

  He nodded. “Dying,” he said. The blood left his face. He stooped, leaning harder on the railing.

  Gwen put a hand on his back. Even through his vest she could feel his ribs separate with each slow inhale. She rested her other hand on her navel, took a breath and felt her stomach rise and fall. She knew she would remember this moment, the heat and the antique light, like an old black-and-white photograph yellowed from the sun. And Valiant alive beside her. His eyes shining like a night sea, like the great beyond.

  “My whole life I’ve waited for this,” he said. “My whole life I didn’t know. But this was my dream. This city on fire.”

  “Bahía de los Fumos.”

  “You remember.”

  Years ago, he’d told her the story. The first Europeans to have sailed this coast saw the brown haze over the hills, the haze from the campfires of the Gabrielinos, and called Los Angeles, or what would become Los Angeles, Bahía de los Fumos. Bay of the Smokes. That was three hundred and fifty years ago. And here it was, still home to fires, still hung with smoke.